Inflation Convergence In East African Countries

Abstract

The paper investigates inflation convergence in five East African Countries: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda, as they aspire to form a monetary union by 2024 under the umbrella of the East African Community. Based on various panel unit root tests, we find that inflation rates in these countries have been converging. An explanation for the convergence is also provided from the perspective of a Global Vector Autoregressive (GVAR) model, which attributes this convergence to a similarity in terms of the nature of shocks affecting EAC countries as well as the role of foreign factors as drivers of inflation given that inflation has been low and less volatile in industrial and emerging countries since the early 1990s.

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